EDUCATION - way to enlightenment or the reciprocal?

Education, undoubtedly a way broader term than our imagination, cannot be limited by any boundaries of written terms. However, if we still move on to define it in some words, it would not be wrong to say that its a very short journey from darkness to light, which literally takes a long time to be completed or to be more precise, cannot be completed actually.

To live as an illiterate or unknowing person is not the norm of this modern world. For some poeple or for most of the people, education in a person's life begins when he or she starts school and ends, when someone is done with the studies. But, that is the well-accepted idea of Formal Education. In fact, in reality, eduaction has been there all the way long from our birth till demise. Education is not a thing that we have bought at a moment in our life and then just exhausted it after a period of time, but its a process of being counted in the counting of aware mortals. 

Well, a positive line of thoughts regarding education must praise it as a source of enlightenment, hope, some kind of achievements, productivity and the list does not end here. However, one should also talk about its downsides unabashedly. The modern societal norms literally discard that person from the civilised world who was not able to get education or is unable to go through the very concept of education. Another, not normally discussed, dark angle of education is that most of the pupils do not take education as a way to learn fascinating and mind-boggling concepts about our world, but a race, which they have to win at any cost. Not anything self-made, but its well known that we have heard about a lot of suicidal cases of school children, who were unable to clear a certain benchmark of mere numbers and were given the tag of FAILED. We also have to get this thing in mind that to call a student failed who has gotten less marks is not wrong because it will more look like an unjustice to the scholars or toppers if we do not use this term, the fact here to get is that schools and students themselves should not take up these terms with such a pessimistic mindset that they jeopardize their lives.

As a vague summary of the idea of education, 'vague' because it cannot be summarised precisely, it would not be inappropriate to question that is today's education is approaching the goal for which it was developed or the paths of education are entangled with some other sorts of dark concepts, with a big question mark?